Clemens Krauss: Reception

“More general social, political and cultural processes can be made palpable not only through the application of psychoanalytic transference onto a canvas, for example, but also to the overall situation of an art exhibition, for instance through the language and the voice of the persons involved.” (Clemens Krauss)

In his art, Clemens Krauss starts out from a “universal” body, which is not defined through the individual work of art, but as the relationship between artist, observer and especially the conditions in which art is produced. The art object thus constitutes the third element between artist and observer. Equally, the artist’s biographical reference is imminent in his concept of art. Thus he communicates with the conventional white cube, among other things, with the help of self-made video material from his childhood, paintings, but also by means of participatory performance, consisting of the offer to undergo a psychoanalytic session with the artist.

For Kunstraum Innsbruck, Clemens Krauss has conceived a series of rooms presenting anteroom situations that only apparently lead to an exhibition room proper. All through the Kunstraum premises, the visitors stroll from one individual, variable anteroom to another, to linger and look at artworks from various work groups. The quintessential anteroom thus is presented as a waiting and expectation room that enters into a dialogue with the visitor’s viewing habits and points of view. In one of these rooms, the only one that is to be entered by one person only and is not a walk-through room, Clemens Krauss holds psychoanalytic single sessions with exhibition visitors.